What do we need and want
for our faith community?
sermon by Manfred Schreyer

Over the past weeks and last three months we have tried to identify what God wants from us and we have tried to seek God’s will.

We have found out that it is important for us to seek God’s will and not to follow our own understanding who God is but to hear and listen to who God is and to listen what God wants from us.

It is also important to read about God’s will for us! As Christians and as humanity as a whole.

Furthermore we have identified that every action which we take in this life will cause a reaction from God. The reaction is not a direct slap by God toward us, but a build in mechanism into His universe that immediately causes a reaction.

In understanding that, we understand that God wants to be close to us, because He wants to bring his Kingdom through us (his believers) as a glimpse to the earth.

Early Christians have done that very well: They have cared for the helpless, they have promoted peace, they have studied the scripture, they have prayed, they have torn down all barriers of race, gender, nationality, etc. They were known to be a close-net and most of all a sacrificing community. They created a safe harbor for those who were seeking hope, love and purpose in this life.

Some of those believers gave it all, even their life for a cause that far exceeds the importance of sacrificing toward another God.

Early Christians gave up any sort of legalistic argumentation, because the message of Jesus was a simple message, it was the message of eternal life. Of a life hereafter, which was reachable.

Today, we as society have reached a tremendous comfort level in our society, somehow our worries are not surrounded by survival and lack of material things. We mostly worry how we can reach for more. In fact our whole system is made up of achieving more in this world.

Ah, and then there is eternal life . . . we almost have that mastered too! People now begin freezing their dead bodies in hope to become alive again, we eat pills to live longer, medicine is so far advancing that I can stay younger; technology has allowed us to keep people alive even if they are ready to "leave" and let us not forget, there is always cloning . . . maybes we can reproduce ourselves all over . . . we can live again . . .

Well, we have not reached eternal life , but many of us have high hopes that we reach eternal life by our own doing. . . .and I am here to tell you it will NOT happen!

But what this entire worldly thought process has done, it has removed us from thinking about our own death and we are not confronting our last second(s) here on earth. We believe it will not happen to us . . . Yet . . . so soon . . . tomorrow . . . it may happen later . . .

And better yet we have attached ourselves to this life so deeply that we are not willing to let go. Not even while we are here. We accumulate, hoard, maintain . . . which takes an immense time and effort and we become attached to worthless things of this world.

Yes, "the path is narrow . . . and few will come though", because most chose an easier path.

That is why it is so hard to reach people, because of the world that has shared a fictional view . . . I know there are people who chose Christianity because it is the thing to do . . . But they miss the component of being people of sacrifice.

When Paul speaks to the church of Corinth, he literally gives them a purpose to be the church.

We as the church, as the worship center of God, as the place through whom all people find salvation and find salvation in action and the message, have great difficulty of reaching people who have the world view I was describing.

I was recently on a focus group for Middletown Hospital who is in the process of building a brand-new Hospital and Cooper Research selected me to be on their focus Group.

The dominant questions they were constantly asking were: (a) when you think of Middletown Regional Hospital, what comes to your mind and (b) when you think of Middletown Regional Hospital what is your perception?

What would happen if we asked people in our community these two questions?

We will give you a slip of paper and you will have an opportunity to fill in your own answer. Please do not write what you wish for, but tell us your thought. Do not put your name on it. We will collect these slips later.

You know, I have a beautiful large in-ground-swimming pool and I have many memories when I walk by that pool. Memories of a happy family and especially about my children, who enjoyed many hours of wonderful times.

Last year I opened the pool and as every year I have to put in the beginning of the season a large amount of Chlorine and shocker into the pool, because as always the water turns full of algae, because it sits for so long without chemicals over the winter and spring season.

As always it cleared up, we swam for a brief time, but then the water turned green and we took our time to address the problem. We tried intermittently, but we were unable to resolve the problem. It was our fault because we did not take any immediate action and we did not follow up on the PH level, chlorine level, et. So we covered it up and we said that we’ll wait until the next summer and then clean it.

Guess what? We opened it up this year, we did the same process and we did not do a good job of getting the water clean . . . the consequence was that we did not go swimming once in our pool this year. That is somewhat sad, because this was probably the longest summer we ever had.

So, the reason I am telling you the story is this: The pool symbolized our church. We are here and we are coming, but we are unable to attract any new swimmers. Not because we are dirty like the water in our pool, but because the waters are not clear and it seems unattractive.

You know the water is the same . . . it does not matter if the water is green, or clear or blue . . . but it is the perception.

What does it take for us to make the water clear? What is it that we have to offer to people who find the pool of this life more attractive then the pool God has to offer?

So, I invite you to write two things down on another piece of paper:

Again, don’t put your name on the paper.

It is time for us to find our identity again, because the pool is cloudy. It is time to tell people who we are and more important, it is time to show people who we are in our actions.

We need to have commitment and we need to give people a reason to come to the house of God. We need to brake down the barriers of perception and give people a reason.

Church is not a convenient place to be. It is a place of responsibility, of obligation and of sacrifice. It is a place for answers given which the world of reason cannot give . . . we have to cleanse ourselves of the things that suppress the purity of the water by spreading the Gospel.

In our upcoming congregational meeting I would like to share our slips of papers with all of you, and then we will try to clean our pool . . . and then we will hear the words of Paul again and it will find new meaning.